I Love Eating Play-Doh: Complaints About the Heroine's Journey
While reading Nella Larson’s Quicksand, I found myself
constantly referring to Murdock’s version of the heroine’s journey, trying to
connect it to the events of the novel with little success. I was constantly
grasping at straws with the vein hope that it would help me make some sense of
the broader structure of the narrative (spoiler: it didn’t), and the process of
doing so left me very frustrated. In reflection on my experience, I have
outlined several issues I take with Murdock’s version of the heroine’s journey.
Issue #1: It’s too vague.
Murdock’s version of the heroine’s journey (which I will refer to from hence with the initialism “MV”, because “Murdock’s version” is too long to type over and over) does not measure reconciliation between genders; it can be abstracted to any binary system. Say that I really loved eating blue play-doh, but after eating so much blue play-doh, I begin to grow sick of it and wish to eat yellow play-doh. Replace every instance of “feminine” in MV with “blue play-doh” and every instance of “masculine” with “yellow play-doh”, and MV works perfectly fine. You can argue about the nuances of how the genders interact with one another in a more complex way than blue and yellow play-doh interact with each other, to be sure. But as the reader, we place these nuances ourselves within MV, to try to make it more familiar to us. If I asked every person in this class to define “masculine”, every person would have a different answer. We place details with MV to make it more familiar to us. As a result, taking MV in its purest, most literal form reveals a very abstract and vague journey. Which brings me to my second issue with MV,
Issue #2: What does it have to do with women?
Due to its abstract nature, MV really has little to do with women and femininity. To be called the “heroine’s journey” should indicate some strong connection to the universal tribulations faced by women living in our modern society, and while I am not a woman, MV seems to have very little to do with this. The hero’s journey is called such because all, or most, heroes have a very similar structure to their journeys that connects them in meaningful ways. Therefore, to call MV the “heroine’s journey” is to imply that most women undergo very similar experiences in their lives that match MV’s format, a claim I find very difficult to believe. That’s not to say that it is false 100% of the time, but to reduce one woman’s relationship with masculinity to a strict path is, in a way, rather patriarchal. Similarly, it also implicitly genders the original hero’s journey as inherently “masculine”, which is just plain wrong (although some of its stages are a bit dated). Why should we be needlessly gendering archetypes?
Issue #3: It has nothing to do with literature.
A brief glance at the Wikipedia entry for “heroine’s journey” (or paying attention in class) yields that MV was devised for use in therapy and had zero origin in literature (though Murdock was, at one point, a student of Joseph Campbell, and took inspiration from the OG hero’s journey). MV was never intended to be used in the analysis of literature, so why should we use it to? Murdock states about MV that “The feminine journey is about going down deep into the soul, healing, and reclaiming”. Perhaps your experience differs, but I do not feel deeply connected with Helga Crane’s soul after only 126 pages of her life. People are infinitely more complex in real life than any literary representation of one, so trying to use MV to analyze Helga’s story is ultimately a waste of time. That’s not to say that I don’t like MV; I think what Murdock is trying to do by creating a more real-world instance of the hero’s journey to help her patients heal is a really clever idea, and from my small amount of research, it seems to work pretty well. The problem certainly isn’t that MV is fundamentally flawed, it’s jus that it doesn’t mesh well with a literary world in the same way the hero’s journey does.
In conclusion, women aren’t real and we’re all going to die. Thanks for reading.
I completely agree with this post. I never really liked looking at Murdock's version of the heroine's journey because compared to Schmidt's version it doesn't really give us a lot of explanation. I also don't really see the need to call it a heroine's journey because everyone can go through something similar to what Murdock's describing regardless of gender. But it is kind of helpful when reading Quicksand, because, as you said, you can switch out masculine and feminine to other binaries Helga identifies and struggles with throughout the book. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI agree that the nature of Murdock's version raises a lot of issues when trying to apply it to literature. You delved into this a little, but using a tool that is meant to work on real life on fictional characters seems a little ridiculous. I feel like protagonists in novels are not developed enough to fit the purposes of Murdock's journey, nor are they human enough. Fictional characters often exhibit personalities that are supposed to make them enjoyable to read about, but as such often possess innate characteristics which makes them different from the majority of people.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your critical analysis of Murdock's version of the heroine's journey in relation to Quicksand. The vagueness of Murdock's framework that applies to any binary system diminish its relevance to women's experiences. The lack of a strong connection to the universal troubles faced by women challenges the notion of it being a "heroine's" journey. Furthermore, its origin in therapy rather than literature limits how it can be applied to literary works.
ReplyDeleteYeah. When I was trying to do my own 'analyses' of the Heroine's Journey, I saw that the definition of 'masculine' and 'feminine' were very vague. Assigning essentially random things as masculine and feminine felt quite stupid and reductive. I think a better way of thinking of the heroine's journey model in literature is not by limiting yourself to masculine and feminine terms (which, to be honest, are beginning to grow outdated). Rather, it would better just be framed as abandoning your identity, embracing a new one, and then integrating and accepting elements of both.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to disagree with this analysis. As I've said before, the masculine in Murdock's heroine's journey denotes self-actualization while the feminine denotes service or support. Murdock's heroine's journey involves a character deconstructing a society where the masculine takes the toxic form of self-actualization for the few at the expense of the feminine servitude of others. We can clearly see Helga struggle with this toxic dynamic throughout Quicksand. Her feminine "service" at Naxos feels unfulfilling because it only bolsters the aims of White society while her attempts at independence and masculine "self-actualization" in Harlem bring similar feelings of aridity because of her disconnect from a sense of mutual community. Obviously, I can't get into all of it here, but I'd recommend you check out my blog post for some more insight. Overall, my answer would be no, you can't just replace everything with play-doh: the terms in Murdock's model have a greater significance and meaning.
ReplyDeleteHello, William.
ReplyDeleteI'm breaking past the mold and DISAGREEING with your analysis (wooaaah shocking we don't live in an echo chamber of "nice post!"s?!?!?!?!?!?). I will put in an unnecessary amount of effort in this comment and respond to your points one by one.
1) I choose to believe that the vagueness of Murdock's heroine's journey is actually a positive. The fact that it can be applied in various different situations makes it a far more useful tool than if it were a specific, step-by-step process. Masculinity and femininity WILL mean different things in different contexts, and can connect with other concepts in an intersectional way (for example, the genderization of certain classes or races). The vagueness of these concepts makes it easier to identify the contextual dichotomies within a story, especially concerning those in a patriarchal system. Anyways, what I really mean to say is that the abstract nature of the journey allows more room for analytical thought. As for the play-doh, I mean, the colors could potentially be metaphors for the systemic oppression of certain genders, it really depends how you use the resources you're given.
2) Yeah, I agree with this, partly. Personally I don't think the "heroine's journey" is the best name for this, since IMO it can be used for basically everyone struggling with gender, society, etc. HOWEVER, I will say that the Hero's Journey IS (kind of) gendered male. Here is a quote from a website: "[Maureen Murdock] developed a model of a heroine’s journey based on her work with women in therapy. When she showed it to Campbell in 1983, Campbell reportedly said, 'Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.'" Uhhhh, that sounds pretty gendered to me!!!😬😬😬Of course this could just be Campbell being a malepilled chad-base, and we can just ignore his opinion, but there is definitely a male history to this monomyth.
3) I kiiiiiiiiiiiiinda get your point here, but like, what? Just because its original purpose was to be used for real life, doesn't mean it can't be used for analyzing literature as well. IMO it's better for analyzing the higher themes/morals of literature rather than a specific by-the-by tic-tac-toe typ'a thing (which works well for Helga's story doesn't it??? The whole thing is an observation of all the oppression and that stiff and stuff). Honestly the argument that the hero's journey meshes better in the literary world is kinda questionable as well considering its reputation (consider: that one reddit post).
Anyway, the moral of this comment is YOUR"E WRONG and I"M RIGHT. (i mean no disrespect by this comment i just felt the need to prove you wrong)
I agree with your assessment of Murdock's Heroines Journey, and I think the play-doh analogy is a very apt rhetorical tool which illustrates your point well. If the framework of the heroine's journey is so generic that it can be applied to literally anything, then it brings the interesting philosophical question of whether it's even useful to us in the first place. if I write "wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, awawawawaawawawaw", could you argue this as a heroine's journey and identify a separation from the "w" (feminine), identification with the "a" (masucline), and integration of the "w" and the "a"?? at what point of abstraction does it stop being a meaningful tool of of analysis and start being an abstract concept?
ReplyDelete